 Me: trying to repair a Thing, Googles for instructions, like a fool The Internet: Here is an article titled How to Repair A Thing, with paragraph headings including "What is a Thing?", "What does Thing do?", "Why might you want a Thing?", "The history of Things", "Great alternatives to Things", "Where to buy a Thing", "30 facts about Things you didn't know". At the end you will find a single sentence that says "If your thing is broken, it is best to contact a qualified expert to repair it." 22 comments
@jimbob this is it. I feel like the younger generations will laugh and pat us on the head when we say this, but I SWEAR you used to be able to solve problems like this using the internet.  @milesmcbain @jimbob You still can, you just click the third link instead of the first link. @NewtonMark @milesmcbain well I made it to the second page, this time, before I found something written by an actual human being who has touched a Thing @jimbob @NewtonMark @milesmcbain I keep thinking when I fix a thing that I should write a blog about it, but who would find it?  This all worked up until 5-7 years ago. SEO spam has always been there but it's like Google management decided one day to just stop fighting it. @suetanvil @milesmcbain @jimbob “stopped fighting” about 15 years ago, started really actively encouraging about 10 years ago, and we just saw the tidal wave devastation of “search” as a function in the last 5 years or so with millions of entire sites created by algorithm, every one of them funneling money to Google via ads.  Maybe you should join a Thing forum, where you can receive advice like "I was talking to a friend who has a different version Thing to yours, and it broke in a different way, and they said they were going to try <this>. I'll try to post a picture later, if I can find it."  Several years later: "If you read the OP, you'd see they were asking about a "Thing", not a "thing", and anyway this thread hasn't been active for YEARS!!!" @jimbob and AI crapwriting is only just getting started! We should be able to vote on the usefulness of the responses we are given when we type in a search, it would crush these time wasters(but might harm advertising revenue so will probably never happen)  @jimbob Problem is the rampant #AntiRepairDesign arpund the.globe and the increaded #Enshittification! @jimbob The Internet is the superlative invention for enabling petty anti-social behaviours for profit at scale. Digital parasites can rapidly extract a few drops of blood from large numbers of people. An inevitable feature of every ecosystem, and very difficult to discourage.  @jimbob The other day I read why recipe sites do that whole nauseating preamble before you get to the actual recipe. You can't (or, at least, it's very difficult) to copyright a recipe but you can copyright all the BS narrative that precedes it. So maybe this is the same thing. |
Gregory's Server
@jimbob turns out it was a Thong.